Your children need to eat healthy to grow healthy and at the same time, children tend to be the pickiest eaters! See the problem? This is why it’s quite common for parents to find it challenging to encourage healthy eating habits in their children. But with a positive approach, some creativity, and a little bit of patience, your kid’s mealtime can become your biggest opportunity to nurture lifelong habits that promote growth and well-being. In this blog, we’ll take a deep dive into some effective tips and strategies to help you navigate the challenges of feeding your tiny picky eaters. Let’s get started!
Understanding Picky Eaters
Your child’s physical growth as well as brain development is associated with eating healthy and nutritious food. If they get poor nutrition, it can lead to long-term health consequences such as stunted growth, weakened immune systems, and poor cognitive development. But does that mean you should force your kid to eat healthy food? The answer is NO. Forcing food cannot be a sustainable strategy to encourage healthy eating habits. On the contrary, forcing to eat certain foods can create a negative association with the food. To encourage healthy eating habits in picky eater, you have to first understand the underlying cause behind their aversion to certain foods.
Almost every child goes through a phase of picky eating and it can arise out of aversions or preferences. This can include their taste preferences, sensitivity to certain textures or smells, and an inherent desire to have control over their food. Therefore, it is essential to understand their picky eating habits and implement effective strategies accordingly.
Creating a Positive Environment
One of the fundamental approaches to addressing picky eating is to create a positive and stress-free mealtime environment. Here’s how you can do it-
Set Realistic Expectations: Setting realistic expectations becomes extremely important to create a positive environment. You need to make peac with the fact that having preferences and aversions is normal and your kid might not eat something no matter what strategy you implement. So instead of engaging in a power struggle over food, you can find alternatives.
Allow Choice: Your little ones don’t have much control over any of their life decision at that age, so they tend to seek control over any little thing they can find including food. So you can encourage healthy eating habits by giving them some amount of control over their food choices by offering them multiple alternatives. For example, most fruits and vegetables are nutritious so you can ask your kid to choose which fruit they want to have as snacks or which vegetable they prefer for dinner.
Avoid Bribes and Pressure: Offering bribes and pressuring the kid are common mistakes parents make. It is a common practice to bribe the kid by saying you’ll give them a treat if they finish their healthy meal. However, this practice can have a long-term negative impact. It can lead to lead to resistance and may reinforce negative behaviors around food.
Practical Strategies to Encourage Healthy Eating
Now that you know that pressuring, bribing, or forcing are not a good way to encourage healthy eating, don’t get disheartened. Here are some practical and effective strategies to bring positive changes to your kids eating habits.
Introduce New Food Gradually
It takes time for kids to get accustomed to new tastes and textures so avoid rushing into introducing new food. Start with small portions of the new food and serve them alongside familiar food they like. Remember to be patient. Your kids might not eat the new food initially and it might take multiple attempts before they accept the new food.
Make Food Appealing
Kids get intrigued by colourful palettes and fun designs. So get your creative juices flowing to make the food look more appealing to your kid. If the food looks dull and bland, it might discourage your picky eater from consuming it. So make the food colourful, serve them on fun plates and bowls, and present them well. This may include cutting fruits and vegetables into fun shapes or making colourful food art.
Get Your Kids Involved
As mentioned above, giving your kid limited choice over their food can lead to positive association with the food, thus, encouraging them to eat healthy. So get your kid involved as much as possible in the process. You can take them grocery shopping and let them pick the vegetables or fruits they like. They can also be your little helper in the kitchen and get involved with the cooking process.
Establish Routine
A lack of routine in your kid’s life can lead to the development of unhealthy eating habits. When you don’t schedule specific meal times, sometimes kids can get overly hungry. As a result of this, they often resort to consuming unhealthy snacks or overeating. If you maintain a routine for meals, they can get the right nutrition at the right time. Also over time, their body gets accustomed to the schedule leading to more disciplined eating.
Experiment With Cooking Method
Textures of the food can be an important factor that encourages or discourages kids from eating certain foods. The easiest way to overcome this challenge can be to experiment with different cooking methods. For example, your kids might not eat a certain food due to its soggy texture when boiled, but the same food might become appealing if you fry it. You can try frying different vegetables into crispy fritters to encourage your child to eat more veggies.
Be a Role Model
Kids learn from their surroundings and the adults around them. So if you want to inculcate healthy eating habits in your kids, you and your partner must also have healthy eating habits. Enjoy a variety of healthy food around them and your picky eaters are sure to learn from it.
Encouraging healthy eating habits in picky eaters requires patience, persistence, and a positive approach. By creating a supportive mealtime environment, offering a variety of nutritious foods, involving children in food choices, and being a positive role model, parents can help their children develop lifelong habits that promote overall health and well-being. Join our community of parents dedicated to promoting healthy eating habits in children. Share your own strategies and experiences in the comments below or connect with us on social media for more tips.